This course is designed to help students develop a lean mindset and acquire both skills and strategies that they can apply to enhance international programs at their own institutions. They will complete an initial lean process plan for the international operation of their choosing.

The growth and sustainability of international education depends today on adapting current approaches and creating viable paths to institutional and student success. We will tap the lessons of one nationally award-winning office that has transformed itself to make international education attainable for all who seek it.

This course is designed for international education professionals, leaders, and future leaders needing tools and strategies for taking their institution to a higher level of international engagement, regardless of their starting point or institutional stature. The power and impact of international education on students seems to enjoy recognition as a universally-understood benefit in an era of rapid globalization, yet it is also constrained by the hard truths of internal barriers and external challenges. Through specific exercises, readings, and projects in this rigorous module, participants will push themselves and develop both professional skills and valuable deliverables to implement in their own settings.

This course focuses on decision making in the international education environment. During the course we will examine financial as well as qualitative data that an international education leader would need for the decisions being considered including risks that need to be considered in each decision. We will examine international education scenarios and explore the type of data that would be needed to arrive to a decision. Some of the decisions international education leaders face relate to: international site operations and branch campuses, evaluation a program abroad continuation or elimination, special pricing and incentives for a partner institution, outsourcing of the services including using agents for international recruitment. In addition to financial and qualitative factors, the course will relate ethical issues to the decisions.